28 Weeks...And a Serious Change of Plans





On Tuesday, Adam and I went to our "routine" 28 week Maternal Fetal Medicine appointment.  We knew our babies had been measuring a touch small, but otherwise were really happy with how they seemed to be moving more and my belly was growing slightly.  To be honest, I was feeling great! 

Our ultrasound (routinely performed for several reasons) showed AEDF in both babies, something relatively rare in dichorionic/diamniotic twins.  I'll let you use Dr. Google if you care to learn more, as it's fairly complicated!  The treatment for it is bedrest, decreasing the blood pressure (if this is an issue), and watching the babies closely for an advancement to REDF.  Once REDF happens, the mortality is 100% if missed.  In layman's terms, this means that the babies will die.  We were admitted directly to the hospital and told to plan on being there between 5 days (which would be the case only if flow came back) and until birth.  On Wednesday, both babies had REDF...so we were told that we would not be going home until delivery.  Period.  No discussion.

The babies are back to AEDF now and will hopefully stay there or improve (not as likely).  They are tested every 8 hours as well as every morning with ultrasound to evaluate their cord flow and other BPP values. So far, they are getting perfect scores daily.  As long as this is the case, we allow them to continue to "grow" inside of me.  Once they fail, which will likely happen at some point before 34 weeks, I'll have an urgent/emergent c-section and the babies will be spending several weeks in the NICU.

Obviously, we never dreamed of anything like this happening to us and our babies.  But, we are VERY thankful we didn't postpone our appointment (which we considered because I was moving my office this week) as our situation could have been tragic.  Our babies and I are well for now (minus this problem) and are taking everything one day at a time.  Many of you have emailed, called, messaged, and texted these past few days and we really appreciate it!  Thank you for these and your prayers.  All 4 of us can definitely use them!

BTW...  The photo on top is what we are now experts in.  Basically, the top line is "normal" flow.  The second is absent diastolic flow (what we have), and the third is reverse diastolic flow (what we had Wednesday, which is basically me "stealing" blood and nutrition from the babies).  Every morning, we look at these to see where things are...talk about nerve-wracking.  The good news though is that I'm responding well to the strict bedrest and everything else (blood pressures, blood sugars, thyroid levels, etc.) seems to be going perfectly.  So now...we wait.